Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the the-ron-wyden-edition dept

So a week ago, as some of you noticed, we had Senator Ron Wyden write the "favorites of the week" post, which got an impressive reaction. And, in fact, the top two highest voted "most insightful" comments both were responses to that post, addressing Senator Wyden. First, we had mudlock who wrote:

You make me want to move to Oregon, just so I can say "I voted for that guy!"

If you have more time, I think it would be great if you would do something like a Slashdot interview (although I hear the kids these days are doing reddit AMAs instead? Either or.)

You also stood up against these efforts in congress before others even considered it worth their time. Thanks for that.

As a Canadian, I can't really threaten any senators or reps with my vote, but I sincerely hope your consituents reward you when the time comes.

Nice to see lots of people recognizing Senator Ron Wyden's contribution to fighting against bad internet policy (as well as a variety of other dangerous issues, such as abuse of the Patriot Act).

As for editor's choice, I had trouble narrowing it down to just two, so bonus time, you get three this week. First up, we've got Ima Fish discussing Hollywood's inability to recognize that it no longer drives popular culture:

How could anyone seriously believe that Hollywood drives popular culture considering that most movies nowadays are either remakes or sequels.

How is it possible to drive culture forward when nearly everything you produce is from the past?!

Then we've got Chosen Reject talking about how Redbox is fighting Warner Bros. and going to buy DVDs from alternative sources in order to rent out WB movies that WB doesn't want rented. Something about that seems crazy:

I find this absolutely fascinating. Redbox is willing to go to court to fight WB for WB's own sake. This is like some kind of forced intervention for a suicidal person. WB wants to shoot themselves in the foot and Redbox is fighting to stop them. It's almost surreal.

And, finally, on the insightful side, we've got an Anonymous Coward doing a quick stock check on the impact of ICE seizing domains of websites that were going to stream the Super Bowl today:

New domain name? -Check
Wikipedia the US relations with the TLD country? -Check
48 hours left before superbowl to allow DNS propagation? -Check
Make sure to email all members the new URL? -Check

How much money did ICE waste on this again?

The only thing missing from that comment is that it should be "how much taxpayer money did ICE waste..."

Okay, okay. I know what kind of week it's been. You're done with the insight... and you want to move on to the funny. We can do that for you.

Coming in first (by a decently wide margin) was also a comment from the Senator Wyden post. After one of our regular critics tried to attack Wyden, another commenter jokingly asked if that original, trollish commenter was Chris Dodd. That Anonymous Coward brilliantly destroyed that theory:

He is the head of the MPAA, use of computers and the interwebs is prohibited.

"Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to create an artificial fish scarcity, and he'll eat steak for a lifetime." -Stephen Colbert

On to the editor's choice awards... and for the sake of balance (as well as my own inability to pick just two) you get three of those again. First up, TheStupidOne gives a thorough explanation for Warner Bros. to not even let people put DVDs into someone's rental queue until 28 days after the DVD has actually been released:

Don't forget the saying "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." By making their movies completely inaccessible to the people that want them, WB is increasing the excitement their fans have for the movies. By not allowing them to add movies to their queue, the fans will be anxiously checking Netflix daily to see when they can add the movie they wish to watch. Many of those fans will become so excited about the movie that their money will fly out of their wallets and into WB's underground vault. At which point Scrooge McDuck will dive into the pool of cash while WB executives sip celebratory martinis and discuss which sequel to make a sequel of next.

Then we have Marcus Carab responding to Jonthan Franzen's statement about how ebooks have no permannce and feel like they can be changed at any time -- unlike good, old fashioned paper, which is somehow permanent and meaningful.

Maybe nobody will care about illuminated manuscripts 50 years from now, but I do ... Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they spent hundreds of man hours copying it out by hand and filling it with unique graphical and typographical touches. A printing plate always feels like we could lose that, change that, move the metal type around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough.

And, finally, this last comment just missed out on the number 2 spot in the funniest list, and I'm actually happy about that because ever since I saw it, I knew I wanted it to close out this week's comments post. Considering the Super Bowl is starting in just a little while, how could we not have at least one comment make the list mocking the NFL's ridiculous claims that using the term "The Super Bowl" in almost any manner, is an abuse of their trademarks. BeachBumCowboy took things to the next level:

Hey Techdirt,

You are all invited to come watch the great athletic event held once a year, roughly 7 weeks before the vernal equinox, played by large athletic males of the teams representing persons who love their country, as well the unusually large persons living in the 3rd largest state of the union of former colonies located in North America. This year said contest will be be held in the capital city of the state admitted on December 11, 1816 to said union, inside the domed sports arena named after a regional manufacturer and distributor of automotive oil, additives, and lubricants.

We will be watching said contest on the large viewing apparatus designed and constructed by the leading electronics maker from the southern most country of the Korean Peninsula, with service provided by the cable provider recently separated from the large conglomerate media company with interests from magazines, to movie studies, and recently Internet providers. It should be a good time with food provided by various crispy tortilla manufacturers and fried spicy chicken wings traditionally associated with a Northeast city located along the border of the two northern most countries of North America.

I dunno, he did use our brand "Techdirt" in there. That seems like infringement to me....

Reader Comments

New domain name? -Check
Wikipedia the US relations with the TLD country? -Check
48 hours left before superbowl to allow DNS propagation? -Check
Make sure to email all members the new URL? -Check

Smarter would be to get two domain names months in advance. Put lolcats and other innocuous stuff on one and stream football on the other. ICE will seize the latter domain a few days or hours before the Super Bowl.

Then, notify everyone that signed up for that site, by email, to go to your *other* domain for the Super Bowl, and suddenly replace the front page there with the game right about when it starts.

Let them try to react on a short time scale to THAT.

Oh, and use a bit of indirection getting the lolcat domain so it isn't immediately obvious that it's registered to the same people. Get it in another name, a few weeks earlier or later than the other.

P.S. Though this blog post is timestamped exactly noon, it was definitely not there as late as quarter past two in the afternoon. That's a pretty large error margin; most wrong clocks are off by only a few minutes, unless they've just been hit with a power outage or something.

Re: Re:

Proof that, if you are really intent on breaking the law, you can do it.

This comment is the result of looking at things from the wrong perspective

What it proves is that however intent you are on stopping people breaking the law you can't do it.

Doesn't make it right.

Right and wrong is irrelevant here. Human nature says that someone somewhere will try it - and this comment shows that they will succeed.

The ability to do something doesn't imply that it is the right choice. It just proves how far some people are willing to get one over on "the man".

Wrong perspective again - how often do we need to tell you?

You aren't the one making that choice - and nor am I. You and I are the ones dicussing whether more and more enforcement is a sensible strategy. It is not your job to decry the morality of those who will ignore the law - only to observe whether they can be stopped by brute force enforcement or not. If the conclusion is that they can NOT be stopped that way then only a fool would continue to pursue the tactic.

Re: Breaking The Law Doesn’t Make It Right

What’s right or wrong isn’t based on what’s legal, but on what’s moral. Laws are there to safeguard the status quo in society. But when that status quo is no longer acceptable, then you have a revolution on your hands. And revolutions, by definition, are illegal, because of course they threaten the status quo.

The American Revolution was illegal, yet it didn’t stop the citizens of the Colonies demanding to live free from colonial oppression. The Arab Spring is illegal, yet it doesn’t stop people demanding to live free from oppression. Copyright violations are hardly in the same league as these—copying bits doesn’t (yet) get you shot at and tortured by your own Government—but the same principle applies. And principle is what it’s all about.

Re: Illegal != wrong

Many laws have been withdrawn, repealed..
Many states dont have the same laws, there are even different conditions for the laws...Do you want to run 20 feet in front of your car with a Lantern??

Do you want CHANGE to happen, quickly and more often?? or do you want to watch the SAME CRAP in the same FORMAT, for the rest of your loves???
Think about WHY, stereo is the most common audio format..NOT quadrophonic, NOT 5.1...its EASIER to do.

Re:

I agree, but not everyone thinks ahead.

However, the evilest site out there, Google, and their evil webmaster tools, will allow you to have all links referring to said domain replaced instantly with new domain, assuming you configured it. As long as the domain is live, you can switch it around.

And Now For Something Completely Different...

Since reader comments on an article about reader comments would be a bit of a wank, can I use this space to bring up discussion of another issue?

blendswap.com is a site for exchanging 3D models for use with the Free Blender software. It’s a wonderful resource, and the folks who run the site are enlightened enough to require that contributions be offered under Free Creative Commons licences.

With one most peculiar exception: all Lego models must be licensed under the non-Free CC-BY-NC.

Why is this? It seems to be because they’re trying to abide by Lego’s Fair Play Guidelines. But of course Lego cannot demand any more control over their trademark than trademark law allows; when I tried to point this out, it seems they didn’t understand that it was about trademarks at all. Blendswap offers other material also based on trademarked products, e.g. movie/game characters/props, yet this exception doesn’t apply to any of them, only to Lego.

Just a stupid comment.

HOW to make a PUBLIC event, PRIVATE and for sale.
SELL IT? you can make a PUBLIC EVENT PRIVATE?
That is a question.

SO,
A school, can sell the EVENT to another person/group and they can restrict, anything they wish.

So, we can make a PUBLIC event, at a PUBLIC site, private.
SELL access to the event, to long distance persons, for a GOOD PRICE, and include adverts so you make more money ON THE SALES of adverts, then any other source??

Lets see you do this...
Buy out a school football game..
restrict access, by cutting down the seating,
record the game and broadcast it, with 1000 adverts...Live??
Lets add, PRE-game and POST- game, and TONS MORE ADVERTS...

Im feeling about as bad, as wondering the NET with no protection.

Anyone hear about Brazil and the Major soccer game, REQUIRING BEER TO BE SOLD??